Trumpism Without Trump: A Losing Formula in Swing-State Virginia

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Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, addressed his supporters in Richmond on Tuesday after losing to Ralph Northam. The messaging of Mr. Gillespie’s campaign was that of a cultural flamethrower.CreditParker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times

As the Republican candidate, Mr. Gillespie tried to run in a very narrow lane by embracing some of the most divisive elements of President Trump’s agenda while treating him like Voldemort and mostly refusing to utter his name. It was enough to motivate Mr. Trump’s supporters in rural parts of the state, but fell far short in Northern Virginia, where the wealthy and well-educated voters who were once reliably Republican continued their march toward becoming solidly Democratic.

Lessons from off-year elections can be overdrawn, but the Virginia race strongly suggests that Republicans running in swing states will have to choose a side rather than try to straddle an uncomfortable line. Mr. Trump’s blunt force, all-or-nothing approach has worked in deeply conservative areas, but Republicans will have trouble replicating that in certain states in the midterms next year when faced with a diverse, highly educated electorate like the one in Virginia.

“We now know what a lot of us in the party already knew: The Trump message is a big loser in swing states and he hurts the G.O.P. far more than helps in those states,” Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist and critic of the president, said in an email. “Suburban voters don’t like Trump and his antics energize Democrats. The myth of Trump electoral power will now start to melt. A wildly unpopular president is a big political problem for the G.O.P. in swing states.”

Another prominent Republican aligned with conservatives called the results, including a number of legislative races, a “clear repudiation” of the party.

The outcome also showed that women were highly motivated to vote for the Democratic nominee, Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, and other Democrats, including several female candidates running in Northern Virginia who defeated incumbent Republicans in state General Assembly races. The prominence of female candidates and the energy behind them here is something that the party will try to repeat in other states.

“I usually resist the temptation to nationalize these races in Virginia, but Trump has been an overbearing presence in this election, and Ed Gillespie chose to run a campaign modeled after the kind of campaign Trump ran last year,” said Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “This was the first big test in the Trump era of the appeal of Trump-style politics at the state level. The president injected himself in this campaign, so he owns some of it.”

Indeed, the president suggested that Mr. Gillespie’s biggest problem was not embracing him enough. “Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter Tuesday night.

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Mr. Northam celebrating his election victory on Tuesday night in Fairfax, Va.CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

Democrats who were worried about low turnout and a lack of energy can breathe easier. The profile of the electorate in Virginia, where Democrats have started to dominate the counties across the Potomac from Washington, was heavily in their favor, and that advantage has been steadily growing with an influx of immigrants who were repelled by Mr. Gillespie’s message, and by a durable foundation of black voters.

In that sense, the pressure for Mr. Northam and the Democrats to win masked the frictions in the party between his more centrist posture and some liberals who criticized his campaign and refused to endorse him.

Democrats showed that they could generate energy, even for a low-key candidate like Mr. Northam, but they can draw little from his campaign in terms of a message other than opposing the harshest edges of Trumpism.

The president’s approval rating in Virginia was 38 percent in a recent poll, and Mr. Gillespie was grudgingly yoked to him. Mr. Trump posted Twitter messages promoting Mr. Gillespie, including on Election Day, but did not campaign with the candidate, an explicit, extraordinary recognition from Mr. Gillespie that appearing with the president of his own party would hurt more than help, something that has rarely happened since Richard Nixon was engulfed by Watergate.

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Supporters of Mr. Northam at a party in Fairfax, Va., on Tuesday night.CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

Mr. Gillespie tried at times to focus on the economy by talking down the state’s prospects under Democrats, but that message did not break through. The state’s unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, and the Northern Virginia region that helped propel Mr. Northam includes some of the wealthiest counties in the country. It did work in rural areas where voters, many without a four-year degree, who once worked in coal mines or in the tobacco industry have not shared in the state’s prosperity.

Though each candidate emphasized issues that played to their base supporters, Mr. Gillespie won the Republican nomination by defeating a far more pure Trumpian candidate, Corey Stewart, and Mr. Northam prevailed over the favorite of progressives, former Representative Tom Perriello. So neither party’s voters were inclined toward the candidate who drew the brightest line distinctions.

But during the campaign, Mr. Gillespie draped himself in Mr. Trump’s clothes, particularly his tough talk on cracking down on illegal immigration. As a national party leader, Mr. Gillespie had been known for his efforts to expand the Republican tent and find a way to connect with immigrant voters, particularly Hispanics.

“I think Ed Gillespie did everything he thought he needed to do to fire up the Trump base, and if the Democrats are fired up and feel united around a cause — whether a good policy or the politics of Donald Trump and others as too anti-women — the Trump coalition is not big enough,” said Steve Jarding, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Democratic campaign consultant.

Democrats needed a victory in Virginia more than Republicans did. Mr. Northam pointed to at least one way. His election showed the limits of Trumpism, and now Republicans will have a choice about how clearly to embrace it.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Trumpism Without Trump Became a Losing Formula in Virginia. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe